The five crime families of New York were under officially under way and one of the leaders was Joseph Profaci.
Joseph Profaci was born in the village of Villabati in the province of Palermo, Sicily on October 2, 1897. In 1922, he arrived in New York along with Gaetano Mangano and his son Vincent, who one day in the future would also rise to become a crime boss in charge of one of the five families.
Profaci had a rapid rise in his chosen career and by 1930 was controlling numbers, prostitution, loansharking and narcotic activity in Brooklyn. He allied himself with Charles Luciano, another up-and-coming gangster and the man who would ultimately lay down the framework for organized crime as it is known to day. Profaci also maintained close ties with other luminaries in the gangster world such as Joseph Doto aka Joe Adonis, Thomas Lucchese, Albert Anastasia, Morelli brothers Willie and Salvatore who controlled the action across the Hudson River and in New Jersey, and even found the time to link with Jack Dragna who bossed the Los Angeles crime family.
He appointed his brother-in-law Giuseppe Magliocco as his assistant, and as well as raking in money from illegal activities, set about building up a very respectable portfolio of legitimate enterprises. He owned real estate, garment-manufacturing enterprises and was the biggest importer of olive oil and tomato paste in the whole of the USA. Three of his companies, Peerless Importers, Alpine Wine and Liquor and Arrow Linen Supply Company were generating over $20 million annually from their business dealings with restaurants, bars and night clubs in the New York Area. He amassed great wealth and possessions - an estate in New Jersey that covered 328 acres and had its own airport, real estate investments in New York and Florida, and a huge home on 15th Avenue in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn.
The Profaci home was three houses on adjoining properties, all three connected by underground tunnels. The main house, a beautiful solid brick building, built like a fortress on a 100�x100� plot, contained amongst other items a thirty-foot hand carved mahogany table with matching chairs valued at more than $50,000 in the 1960�s. It was at this table that the members of the Commission, the ruling board of organized crime, met from time to time to settle disputes and toast each other's skills and achievements. There was also in the basement a purposely-built private altar where Profaci had special services conducted by selected priests whom he called to the house. He was a devout Catholic and major benefactor to the Church in New York. In 1952, two brothers made the mistake of stealing the jewels of Regina Pacis (Queen of Peace), a votive shrine at St. Bernadette's Church in Brooklyn. Profaci used his underworld contacts to have the thieves tracked down and the crown returned to the church. In a symbolic gesture of restitution, he had the two men slowly strangled to death with a rosary and their bodies mutilated.
Profaci was known as a mean, hard nosed and bitter man. He dressed in a flamboyant style, smoked big Havanna cigars and drove everywhere in a black Cadillac. The men in his private army considered him a tyrant. Long after the other bosses had ceased the Sicilian practice of collecting tributes from their men, Profaci continued to demand $25 from each man each month as a tithe. With an organization at its peak of over two hundred men, he was culling in over $50,000 a month. The money was ostensibly to be held in "escrow" to pay members' legal fees or to help out the families of soldiers doing time. Mostly the money just stuck to Profaci and found a permanent home in his pockets. He also insisted on his men paying him a percentage of their rackets, which did not please them very much. Ruling his family with an iron fist, Profaci�s interests and power grew over the years.
In December 1946, along with many of his contemporaries, he attended a full-scale convention of American crime families held in the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Cuba. Meyer Lansky and Charles Luciano had called the meeting. Luciano, who, although exiled and living in Italy at this time, was anxious to try and re-establish his power position back in New York. Fortunately for the government and the American people, Luciano�s attempts at a comeback failed. Unfortunately for Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel the convention determined he had been skimming mob money in his efforts to create the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, and his death warrant for this was endorsed. Interestingly, as a sideline, Frank Sinatra appeared at the hotel as entertainment during the convention.
On October 25, 1957, Albert Anastasia, head of what had been formerly the Mangano family, was shot dead while sitting in chair four in the barbershop of the New York Park Sheraton Hotel, waiting for a shave and hair cut. Legend has it the killers were two of the Gallo brothers, Larry and Crazy Joe, who were soldiers in the Profaci family.
Then about three weeks later on November 14, 1957, Americans found out that, indeed, there was an organized crime syndicate operating in their midst with the revelation that on a cloudy, rainy afternoon in Northwest New York State, observant state troopers had surprised a mass meeting of gangsters. They had gathered at the lush, 53-acre estate of Joseph Barbara, Sr. located on McFall Road, Apalachin. Although at least 60 escaped the police roadblock, a further 63 men were rounded up, including Joseph Profaci.
Although no convictions resulted from the police activity, it proved the existence of a national syndicate of organized crime. After Anastasia and Apalachin, Joe Profaci�s problems were only to get worse. His next really big headache came in the form of the three Gallo brothers and the first family war.